Marching To The Beat Of A Different Reality

Friday, November 11, 2016

The 2016 Election; A Victory for Middle American Values?

The election is over. Trump has won. Celebrities are running for the hills, rioting and protests have broken out in major population centers across the country, and I heard from a friend watching, that a talking head at Good Morning America (the Thursday after the election) felt the need to explain the vote as a reality not a nightmare.

Trump, trumped Clinton - there's no way around that. With the media projecting Hilary as the winner most of last year and throughout the night - even after he took Florida - it was clear by Wednesday morning that the media, liberal America and the celebrity class were shocked beyond reason at the result of this election. I'm not surprised - their total inability to understand the thought processes and lives of middle America represent a majority of reasons for the outcome of this election.

Entertainment and news celebrities live in crystal bubbles surrounded by drooling fans, where they rock swag bags, red carpets and all the free crap designers and beauty companies can throw at them to garner their endorsements. If their movies stink or their news shows can't make it on cable for even a season, it matters not, they'll shuffle off to another show created to entertain the masses, dutifully do their stand up-sit down-line recitation or read off their prompter and go home to their glorious three bed three, three bath, three and a half million dollar vintage ranch-style house in the Hollywood hills - or their overpriced Manhattan flat - to spend 15 minutes with their Armani-clad tykes before they trundle off across hand-scraped floors rescued from a 300 year old farm house live-in nanny in tow, housekeeper not far behind warning of their impending dinner cooked by the celebrity chef who will be along shortly.

Oregon political analyst, Rob Kremer, told Independent Journal Review that Avakian campaigned on the idea that he would use the Secretary of State's office to further his progressive political agenda and — surprisingly — that turned off a lot of Oregon's liberal voters.

Okay, let's think this through. If you're going to turn off liberal Oregon voters, what are you going to do to the people in the Heartland who have the same belief system as these Oregon bakers? Scare them to death? Pretty much. What do scared people do? Well, scared middle Americans don't riot, they vote, and vote they did. Unlike this Roll Call writer who feels he has the pulse on the Heartland because he once lived in Ohio, we who live here don't feel we have a lock on 'Americanism'. We understand there are real problems in some of our communities with bigotry, drug abuse and other outgrowths of poor education and the effects of regional culturalism, but we're willing to work on those, knowing they're in no way even sort of representative of the whole of its inhabitants. I dare anyone interested in checking to Google up photos of public school football teams anywhere in the Heartland and you'll see shiny, smiling brown, black and white faces altogether in one picture, altogether on one team, altogether in the name of football and their hometown school.I tend to think Robby Soave sums up the Trump election quite well in his piece at Reason. Trump won because middle America can only be pushed so far - oh we'll bend - but we've been bending to the point that we're nearly broken.

Eat the food we grow, use our oil to power your TV's movie screens and sports venues - and do it with our blessing and appreciation - but don't throw our values under the bus and regulate our lives into oblivion because as we go, so does the rest of the country.

A Jason Aldean song seems to resonate here, so I'll leave you with the words of Flyover States to give you even more to think on (written by Neil Thrasher and Michael Dulaney).

A couple of guys in first class on a flight
From New York to Los Angeles
Kinda making small talk killin' time
Flirting with the flight attendants
Thirty thousand feet above, could be Oklahoma

Just a bunch of square cornfields and wheat farms
Man, it all looks the same
Miles and miles of back roads and highways
Connecting little towns with funny names
Who'd want to live down there in the middle of nowhere?

They've never drove through Indiana
Met the man who plowed that earth
Planted that seed, busted his ass for you and me
Or caught a harvest moon in Kansas
They'd understand why God made
Those fly over states

I bet that mile long Santa Fe
Freight train engineer's seen it all
Just like that flatbed cowboy
Stacking US Steel on a three day haul
Roads and rails under their feet
Yeah, that sounds like a first class seat

On the plains of Oklahoma
With a windshield sunset in your eyes
Like a water colored painted sky
You'll think heaven's doors have opened
You'll understand why God made
Those fly over statesTake a ride across the badlands
Feel that freedom on your face
Breathe in all that open space
Meet a girl from Amarillo
You'll understand why God made
You might even wanna plant your stakes
In those fly over states